Japanese Syllabaries (Alias For Hiragana + Katakana)

Script Details

Japanese Syllabaries (Alias For Hiragana + Katakana)

Examples of the same phrase in hiragana, katakana, and Kanji by Min-Young Kim.

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Maps

Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana

DISCLAIMER: This script is still being researched

Data

Alternate Names Kana
ISO 15924 Hrkt 412
Type Syllabary
Family East Asian
Direction vertical (RTL) and horizontal (LRT)
Diacritics Yes
Contextual Forms No
Capitals Used No
Glyphs 46
Earliest Location Kyoto, Japan
Earliest Date 796 CE
Latest Date Present
Ancestry
  • Standard Chinese
    • Japanese Syllabaries (Alias For Hiragana + Katakana)

Overview

Originally, Japanese had no writing system. During cross-cultural exchanges in the 3rd through 9th centuries, Koreans taught Japanese people the Chinese writing system and introduced Buddhism. From there, Japanese people began to write in Chinese and then eventually adapted Chinese morphographs into phonographic symbols (man'yogana). Japanese women then adapted hiragana from those morphographic symbols. Around the same time, Buddhist monks (men) derived katakana from Buddhist scripts.

The curved nature of hiragana is associated with women, while the angular nature of katakana is associated with men.

Today, hiragana is used with Japanese words (for conjugation and sentence particles), while katakana is used for transliterating foreign words.

Bibliography

Author Year Publication Publisher
Coulmas, Florian 1999 The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, 193-220 Blackwell Publishing
Miller, Roy Andrew 1967 The Japanese Language The University of Chicago Press
Takayama, K. Peter 1995 Adaption and Resistance to Chinese Literary Hegemony: Korea and Japan International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 8, No. 3, 1995
Tollini, Aldo 2011 The Idea of Writing: Writing Across Borders BRILL